LINCOLN SQUARE — Are your tomatoes bursting at the seams, dotted with dark splotches or still ripening on the vine?
Me, I've got all of the above.
For every perfect piece of fruit I harvest, another is somehow or other damaged. This would have depressed me a month ago but given that even with all the rotten tomatoes I've come across, I'm still drowning in little red and orange cherry-sized globes, and I've got to admit, it's a relief to toss a few in the scrap heap.
After two years of tomato famine, I'm finally feasting, but I've heard from others that their experience this summer has been quite the opposite.
Patty Wetli spoke with an expert about this summer's odd weather and how it might have affected your garden:
As I believe this column has made quite clear week after week, I'm not an expert gardener, so to get to the bottom of what's been happening with this year's tomato crop, I met up recently with John Taylor.
What, you're wondering, does the bass player from Duran Duran know about vegetables?
Probably nothing, which is why I interviewed the other John Taylor, who's a doctoral candidate in crop sciences at the University of Illinois.
Taylor is conducting tomato trials to determine the best varieties for urban gardeners, and one of the sites participating in his research project happens to be Global Garden, where I have a community garden plot.
His explanation for the various woes — cracking, failure to ripen, etc. — that have plagued people's tomatoes: Blame Chicago's wet and wild weather.
Those splotches, he told me, were a sign of fungus, which thrives in the sort of moist conditions created by all the rain that fell over the past three months.
Exacerbating the spread of the fungus is the tendency of home gardeners, myself included, to crowd too many tomato plants into too small a space.
People want variety and high yield so they cram four tomato plants where they should only have one, Taylor said.
Whoops. Ever the over-achiever, I actually shoe-horned five.
The result, he said, is poor ventilation and less sunlight, which not only encourages fungal development but stunts the plants' growth. Not to self for next year: Give a single seedling room to spread its wings, he said, and it will produce as much fruit as four.
The rain is also responsible for the rampant cracking some gardeners have noticed.
Sudden, heavy downpours will cause the inside of a tomato to grow faster than its skin, creating a fissure. If you weren't regularly and deeply watering your plants, the effect will be more pronounced.
The tomatoes are still edible, presuming the split hasn't attracted flies, but they won't last long once picked, as I discovered.
The cracks will widen — even if the fruit is refrigerated — a sort of puss will ooze from the wounds and you'll be left with a slimy mess. Or maybe that's just me.
As for tomatoes' failure to ripen, or slow ripening, that can be attributed to this summer's cooler temperatures, Taylor said.
Considering my plants didn't seem to particularly enjoy last summer's heat wave either, it struck me that they have a very narrow comfort zone.
Optimal conditions, Taylor said, are "not too hot, not too rainy. The 80s are nice for tomatoes."
The good news is tomatoes will continue to ripen up until the first frost, which typically occurs in Chicago by mid- to late-October.
To help speed the process, it wouldn't hurt to nip any blossoms still sprouting on your plants, Taylor said.
The blossoms are not only diverting energy from existing fruit, but the likelihood that they'll produce mature tomatoes at this point in the growing season is slim to none, particularly for larger varieties such as beefsteak, he said.
The bottom line, according to Taylor, is that tomatoes are a crapshoot under any condition.
"It's a lot of hard work and luck," he said.
Well I didn't need a Ph.D. to tell you that.
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